


What We Don't Say

by AgentStannerShipper



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Episode Tag, Episode: s01e12 Datalore, F/M, Fluff, Light Angst, and of course plenty of subtle and not so subtle references to the naked now and legacy, data and tasha are both very bad at dealing with emotions, for different reasons, moderate hurt/comfort vibes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:01:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22868308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgentStannerShipper/pseuds/AgentStannerShipper
Summary: After Lore, Tasha and Data talk.
Relationships: Data/Tasha Yar
Comments: 5
Kudos: 42





	What We Don't Say

**Author's Note:**

  * For [unicornspaceinvasion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/unicornspaceinvasion/gifts).



> For unicornspaceinvasion, who I won't say bullied me into it so much as suggested it offhand and then I couldn't control myself.

Data was at his computer terminal when the door chimed, and the call to “enter” was an automatic response. He tilted his head when it slid open to reveal Tasha, still in her uniform – although that wasn’t unusual for Tasha – and with her arms folded behind her back. She hesitated on the threshold. “Mind if I come in?”

Data gestured her inside. “Please.” He stood. “As your shift is over, I must assume your intent is not to interrogate or imprison me for suspected involvement in my brother’s actions.” He indicated the computer terminal with a hand. “I have been working on my report. You will have it by morning.”

“That’s…” Tasha trailed off, looking around the barren room. She’d remarked, more than once, on the uninviting nature of Data’s quarters. It had puzzled him. He was aware his rooms were not as ‘homey’ as his crewmates’ tended to be, but he also had no need for many of the amenities and pleasures they required. For example, a bed. He did, however, have a sofa, and it was there that Tasha sat now. She patted the spot next to her, and Data obediently followed the implied instruction.

“I’m not here about the report,’ she said, “and I’m _definitely_ not here to lock you up.”

“Lore was my responsibility. At best, I can be considered negligent. At worst, I may be complicit in his actions.”

“ _Data_.” He recognized her tone as exasperation. It was a common one with Tasha. “He was your brother.”

Data kept his eyes on his knees. Tasha’s were very close to his, almost touching. “Yes. He was.” Had they touched since the day Tasha told him had not happened? They had, but only in passing, in performing their duties. It would be very easy to press his knee against Tasha’s.

Tasha scooted closer to him, and Data looked up at her. Their knees bumped. “It’s okay, you know. If you weren’t…” Her gaze dropped, and then she forced it up again, meeting his eyes. “Having a sibling do something like that…having them betray you…losing them…it’s a lot to happen, especially all in one day. It’d be alright if you needed to talk.”

Her body temperature was point zero two degrees below his. “You are aware, of course, that I do not experience emotions. And as I only met Lore in the last few days, I do not know that I have anything to say.” He paused, considering. He was actually considering several things. His report. The upcoming duty roster. A paper on advanced cybernetics that Geordi had shown him the day before. The way, in the light of his quarters, Tasha’s eyes were two distinct shades of blue brighter than they were on the bridge, and how they kept casting down and to the side, like she was remembering something. He leaned forward, a gesture he knew was supposed to convey intimacy. “Do _you_ need to…talk?”

“No!” Tasha’s answer was immediate, for a human. Data believed Counselor Troi might have described it as ‘too fast.’ She shook her head. “No, I’m good.” She laughed, forced and tense. “It’s not like my brother was the one who turned out to be evil.”

Data considered that. “You believe Lore to be evil?”

The question made Tasha pause. She leaned back, folding her arms. “I don’t know, Data. Killing all those colonists…trying to destroy the _Enterprise_ …” She hesitated. “The way he hurt you? Those don’t exactly sound like the acts of a good person.”

“You are assigning a moralistic value to the actions.” Data chose not to comment that the term ‘hurt’ was, in this context, largely an emotional one. “You are implying that Lore must have a moral compass. A…conscience, if you will.”

“Don’t you?”

Data hesitated. “I do not know.” He mirrored her position, sitting back and crossing his arms. The action felt uncomfortable, so he unfolded them again and rested them in his lap. “I was programed based on the moral values of my creator, including a reverence for human life. But…I do not know if that means I have a conscience.” He looked at her. She was watching him. Her shoulders were tight, but she was attempting to give them the appearance of relaxation. “If I do things that are considered morally good only because I was given programming that requires it of me, does that make me a ‘good’ person?”

“Of course it does!”

“But I do not know how I would behave without it,” Data pushed. Part of his mind, one of the many streams of thought still running, was aware that, although he had said he did not need to talk, Tasha’s questions had dragged something out of him, something he had not entirely been aware was lurking beneath the surface of his consciousness. “If I did not have morality programming-“

“Data, we _all_ have morality programming.” Tasha looked momentarily surprised by her outburst. Her back straightened minutely. “Ours is just ingrained in us as children, that’s all.”

A memory that didn’t happen. “You were abandoned as a child.” It made her tense, and Data wondered for a fraction of a second – approximately one sixty-seventh of a second – if he should rescind the statement. He chose his next words with care. “Turkana IV, by your own admission, abandoned human and Federation moral principles, adopting instead a disregard for human life and—” he had been accused before of having no sense of tact, and it was true his programming had difficulty with the concept “—bodily safety.” That was the safest word for it. “However, you are a Starfleet security officer, and you value both of those things highly.”

He had phrased it as a statement, but Tasha took it for the question it was. She leaned into him, so that their shoulders were pressed together as well as their knees. It was unexpected, but not unwelcome. “I don’t know. I guess, those first five years, something must have been done right. And after that, I had to make sure we stayed alive. I had to care about it.”

“We?”

“Figure of speech.”

Tasha was not Lore. They had known each other longer. Data would argue that they were closer, the day that did not happen aside – although, for Data, those memories marked a core, wrapped up in all his other memories of Tasha, as much a part of the fabric of their slowly growing bond as anything else. And he could feel her pulse, thrumming through her body, where they were pressed together. So Data could tell that Tasha was lying.

“Of course,” he said. “I find I still have trouble identifying human figures of speech. It was not a fault in Lore.”

Tasha grasped the change in topic with both hands. “He’s not better than you, Data.”

“That is factually untrue. Lore’s programming was more sophisticated in a number of ways. His inflections, for instance. He had a grasp of rhythm and intonation. He could…sing.” Data had tried singing once. It had gone even worse than his failed whistling experiments.

“Yeah, well, you’re not the only one who can’t carry a tune.” Tasha nudged him, grinning, and it was like a blocked circuit in Data gave way. “Singing’s overrated.”

“He could use contractions.”

“So what?”

“He appeared to have a broader grasp of emotional responses.”

He startled when Tasha’s hand cupped his cheek, her thumb smoothing over the corner of his lip. “Geordi removed the twitch,” he murmured, and he could not be sure why his voice was lower – perhaps a subroutine had kicked in – but it did seem appropriate. Tasha’s gesture had put her head very close to his.

“I don’t believe that you can’t feel, Data. Maybe it’s not as obvious as Lore, but I’ve seen it.”

The day that did not happen. The intoxication that should not have been able to affect him. “In that instance, I was technically malfunctioning.”

“I’m not talking about that.” Her gaze was flickering, to his eyes, to his mouth, and back again. Data could not help but mirror the response. Her thumb was still on his lip. “You _care_ , Data. I’ve seen it.”

“Tasha…”

They both stopped. Their noses were almost touching, too close for Data to count the millimeters. “Lore was cleverer than I was,” Data murmured, and what he meant was, _Lore knew how to want_.

Tasha pulled back. Her hands went to her lap, clenched tight into a ball. She stared at them, rigid as tritanium. “Lore picked a killer over you. You could have saved him, but he didn’t care.”

The crystalline entity was just that, an entity. It was not bound by human morals. The concept of murder did not apply. “I believe there is a human axiom,” Data said. “’You cannot save everybody.’”

“No,” Tasha murmured. “But it’d be nice to save someone who matters.”

Data couldn’t always read people, but Tasha wasn’t hard. They weren’t talking about Lore. He set a hand on top of Tasha’s, another gesture of comfort. She looked at it, then up at him. “You have saved many people, Tasha, including yourself. That is something to be proud of.”

“Yeah?”

“I would not have said it if I did not believe it to be true.”

She pulled one of her hands free, setting it on top of Data’s in the stack and giving his a squeeze. “Thanks, Data.”

“You are welcome.” He paused. “It appears that we both needed to talk.”

Tasha laughed, and she leaned into him more heavily, so that most of her weight rested against his shoulder. “Yeah. Looks like we did.”

They sat there in silence for a while. Data’s positronic brain was never silent, but it quieted a little, memorizing the rhythm of Tasha’s even breathing. After a minute, he asked, “Tasha?”

“Hmm?” Her eyes were closed. Her hair was mussed where it was pressed against his shoulder and neck.

“Are we friends?”

The word was imprecise. Data had people he considered friends. The Captain and Riker, who respected his opinions and did not dismiss him simply because he was a machine. The doctor and the counselor, who cared about his wellbeing. Geordi, the closest thing he’d ever had to a best friend, who sought him out even outside of their shifts, who joked with him even though Data didn’t always understand and who never made Data feel like this was something he lacked. These were all different kinds of connections, different networks serving different functions. But the function Tasha served…

“Yeah, Data. We’re friends,” Tasha said, and her voice was quiet, careful, and Data was struck by a hypothesis, unsupported but insistent, that she was considering the same thing he was.

Another silence. Then: “Tasha?”

Her eyes were still closed. Her lips quirked up into a smile. “Yes, Data?”

“I believe you are right. I do…care.”

Her smile broadened, and she cuddled into him, wrapping up his arm in both of hers. “I know you do, Data. We all do.” She tilted her forehead down, and Data felt her lips against his shoulder. It wasn’t quite a kiss as he remembered it, but he recognized the sensation. “You’re not Lore. You’re better.”

“It is…odd. He threatened to hurt everything I care about. He was willing to betray me. And yet…there is a part of me that…misses him. That…wishes…things had been different.”

“Welcome to being human.”

The words were mumbled, softened by the fabric of his uniform, and Data realized that Tasha was half asleep. He shifted her gently, laying her out on the couch, and she took the blanket he offered her, dragging it over herself and pressing her back into the sofa so that she could see the entire room. Her eyes, half-lidded, scanned it once, and then closed. Quietly, Data rose, taking a seat at his computer terminal and returning to work on his report. His breathing, an unnecessary function but one he utilized nonetheless, fell into sync with Tasha’s. Data didn’t notice, but Tasha did.


End file.
